TvP no-nonsense colossus counter

Hi everyone. Great site and really awesome posts and discussions.

I was wondering if there is some advice the ppl out there could give me on a solid counter-build against a toss player who, in the early-mid game, goes for a 2-3 colossus + stalker and zealot build. I say this because of a game I played on LT, where we spawned in close position and my early push failed (due to the arrival of his first collosus!. I was left to return to my base and panic for a solution with about 3 racks and an expansion. Any tips on how I could've progressed from there?

Im not sure what to say but, if your 'early push' is countered by a collosus, i don't think its early, or that hes either rushed the collosus?
But anyways. Try to kite him with marauders since they own gateway units early game. Then as the toss player starts getting his robo, get your starport and factory up, also get a reactor as it can help with a switch on your starport to produce mass vikes. Factory can provide tanks + thors which do lots of damage and can tank a few hits.

There is a lack on info to be really helpfull. How long after the beginning of the game was your push?, how strong was your eco, and his?. What strucutures had you build ? what improvement on the units?.

For countering colossus there are several ways. My fauvorite one is the ghost with EMP and marine/marauders. Other combos are tanks+bunkers, thor+tanks or Marine+Marauders+Medevacs+Stimpack(in large numbers, without medevac you better forget about it). Yet, everyone knows that the best counter are vikings.
But most of it depend if you had factory built or not, ghost academy, starport....the replay would help.

if there are a few 1-2/3 you can still win with marauders, if not vikings well depends on the situation.. more colosi means less Gateway units or more colosi means more late in game so you should have vikings and tanks.

it took me soooo long to learn this but DO NOT FIGHT COLOSUS UNLESS YOU HAVE VIKINGS! I had to drill that in my head.
Against a player with even skills you just can't win with bio vs colossus straight up.

If protoss is going fast colossus it means that you can expand and protect it with your mm. Colossi is such a gas heavy build, the protoss will not have many stalkers or sentries which means your army can beat their army in the open. Basically you have map control until he gets a colossus out with thermal lance upgrade - then the protoss can come out and expand. If protoss tries to expand before he gets that colossus, punish him because your army should be able to take his out.

It's important to tech to medivacs because it makes it easy to transition to vikings and medivacs just make your army so much stronger because they can heal your bio army (drop play works well vs most toss strats if you choose to do so). Once you see colossus comming out, start pumping vikings instead of medivacs. Against 3 to 4 colossi try to have 20 vikings so you can snipe them.

When you fight the protoss army, make sure to kite so that the colossus will want to chase your army, this will help your vikings hit them easier. Once you down the colossi, land your vikings to help your main army.

Just remember to get vikings asap as soon as you know he's going colossi, you NEED vikings otherwise protoss is just too cost efficient with the colossi.

I'm going to assume your gold or lower if your having this problem (sorry if I offend you).

Everything everyone said here was great, but isn't really necessary against people who don't micro their collosi. It sounds like you just expanded and didn't build enough production facilities. 3 rax is not enough for 2 base. You could have probably thrown down 2 or 3 more rax pumped rauds and won.

No one but me goes zealot collosi and rauds demolish stalker so if you run in stim and wrech all their stalkers the collosi suck without a buffer.

If your not in a high league, which I'm not, most games just come down to having more shit than your opponent. Terrans are also one of those races where you could mass anything and do decent against most builds.

I wouldn't turn to tanks and thors if I were you. Stick with MMM+vikings, lots of vikings. What Antonio said was right. I would only use tanks for holding defensive positions. They give you something to fallback to incase battles go ill, but they are not really for pushing out. Tanks are way too immobile to do any kind of pushing against protoss or zerg. Thors are too slow. MMM+Vikings should do the trick. If he comes out with immortals, get some ghosts for EMP use.

I was asuming tanks were for defnesive purpose, just like bunkers. He pointed that the problem was a counterattack with 1 colossus. for defense, tanks do fine, for pushing they are worth nothing. Yet, if he made a colossus, it means, 7min 15 secs hve passed(that`s the hfaster I have seen to build a colossus), in that time, with a terran, you can build a huge army. maybe your build order needs some improvement, or need to research more.
The best advice I can give you related to push is...do not try to rush. many playes try to rush, and then they insist in keep "rushing" when the surprise factor is lost, and they are loosing "army/minerals". In order to rush you need to have a good build order, be able to keep it, and a good timing. A "bad rush" is loosing the game. A bad rush means that you favoured your early and small army attack at expenses of economy development. If you are "holded back" they will counter, and you will find yourself without enough army to defend, and without a sustenaible economy to allow you to keep creating army and new infraestructures. so you will be "economically locked".

That's why you don't see many rushes in high level leagues.That's my opinion, not the hard true.

Get units to specifically counter them, ie the vikings and have a mass army v mass army approach

Or you can stop them from ever coming out via harass and early aggression, which is what zerg generally has to do.

If you are going medivacs, do some drops so he doesnt want to push out, take out his workers and/or pylons for his important buildings. And as people have said with the vikings as well. Just remember to keep scouting so you know where you are at.

The mind is both willing and able, the hands are too busy reaching for the beer bottle..... Add me on the SEA and NA servers: Flamga #377

welcome to the UEN
not sure of your skill level but as a protoss player i will share what i find annoying when i get fast colossus.

The most important thing here is the time at which the colossi appear. if you had 3rax and no factory i'd assume you were trying to kill him fast or put on lots of pressure to give yourself map control?
The timing of this feels like he was on one base so his army would be pretty small and his production power is limited. if you try to kill him he will force field your army in two so don't try it unless you can force him to waste sentry energy. Make Marauders and macro up to contain him, if you keep him on 1 base long enough you'll out produce him and win. or you could try to force him to engage in an uncomfortable position by getting siege tanks to snipe a few units.

if he fast expanded and then immediately raced to colossus tech he won't have an army. just go kill him or take a third and start turning out vikings, he's in no position to push you without support. colossus without support are awful, they'll lose to 4 or 5 marauders so if you pressure him enough and keep armies small you'll be in a very favourable position.

if he had an expo up and a reasonably sized army and colossus you were probably too slow to push. you want to be hitting him around ~7-8mins if you go 3rax any longer and you've lost the advantage in which case you'll want to expand, add more production facilities and tech up, but you will probably be behind on economy if you gear up to rush and then don't.

i cant really say how to proceed from the game you played due to lack of information but if you were completely caught by surprise then scouting was the issue. for e.g. If your rush is stopped and then you see 3 colossi + zealots coming for you and all you have is 3 reactor barracks, its gg I'm afraid.